Mesh networks have attracted significant attention from telecommunications providers in recent years for their scalability and flexibility in comparison to traditional SONET/SDH networks.
Various protection schemes have been employed in mesh networks to promote network robustness. For example, network protection cycles (as disclosed in Wayne D. Grover, Demetrious Stamatelakis, “Cycle-Oriented Distributed Preconfiguration: Ring-like speed with mesh-like capacity for self-planning Network Restoration”, Proceedings of 1998 IEEE International Conference on Communication (ICC '98), Vol. 1, pp. 537-543, 1998, which is hereby incorporated by reference hereto) and ring covers (as disclosed in L. M. Gardner et al, “Techniques for finding Ring Covers in Survivable Networks”, Proceedings of 1994 IEEE Global Telecommunication Conference (GLOBECOM '94), pp. 1862-1866, 1994, which is hereby incorporated by reference hereto) have each been used to essentially form protection rings with shared bandwidth in mesh networks.
While network protection cycles and ring covers may provide satisfactory bandwidth preservation, these schemes involve algorithms that are computationally intensive. In particular, determination of a protection ring or cycle path requires each network node to have knowledge of the entire network topology. As a result, any change in network topology demands a re-execution of the algorithm at every node. Disadvantageously, protection path processing must occur even at nodes that are distant from the network node(s) that have changed or failed, which may reduce network efficiency.
What is needed is a mesh network protection scheme that overcomes at least some of the above-noted disadvantages.